In helping clients decide on hardwood flooring, I start by comparing wood to other kinds of flooring. Assuming the room is suitable for wood in the first place, other possibilities include carpeting, resilient flooring (vinyl sheet and tile) and ceramic tile. Marble is also a choice, but it’s very similar to ceramic tile so I lump them together.
First of all, let’s consider durability. With reasonable care, wood flooring will outlast carpet and vinyl several times over. True, it may need refinishing once, twice or even three times during its life, but at minimum, a wood floor ought to last 20 years. It’s not uncommon to find perfectly serviceable 100-year-old hardwood floors.
High quality carpeting is tough stuff, too, but depending on the foot traffic, it begins to look threadbare after 20 years and may deteriorate a lot sooner than that. Even cheap replacement carpeting will cost more than a refinishing job on a hardwood floor. Ceramic tile is probably more durable than wood, but a hard object dropped on a tile floor will break a tile, calling for a tricky repair. A dropped object will probably make a repairable dent in a hardwood floor but, with any luck, what you dropped on it won’t break.
Day-to-day care of a wood floor involves sweeping or damp mopping. Unlike carpeting, which acts like a giant rag, wood won’t collect molds and mildew or absorb dust. This delights anyone with allergies. It takes longer to vacuum a carpet than hard surface flooring, and vacuuming never does a thorough job. Even professional cleaning removes only a fraction of the dirt, mold and fungus growing there. Depending on the material and color, tile floors can be very difficult to keep tidy. Some require periodic treatments with sealer to keep them clean.
On the down side, some wood floors require occasional waxing, stripping and rewaxing and, of course, eventual sanding and refinishing. Some new flooring products are delivered prefinished with very durable, baked-on finishes. Some of these don’t need waxing, but because they’re not sanded after installation, they inevitably have “overwood,” or minor thickness or height variations between pieces. A common way of disguising overwood is with chamfers or eased edges on each piece of flooring. Unfortunately, these create gaps between boards into which hard-to-remove dust and debris can lodge.
Although not as fire resistant and water resistant as tile, solid wood requires an extremely high temperature to burn. Should a wood floor ignite, it won’t give off toxic fumes, like burning carpet or resilient flooring. Most modern finishes, particularly the Swedish finish I prefer, protect wood floors against damage from liquid water.
As for square-foot cost, wood costs more than carpeting or resilient flooring but is cheaper than tile. This depends, of course, on the style of flooring, the species of wood and the room where the installation will be done. Some wood floors, parquet over 3/4 inch.,. plywood sheathing, for example, will require underlayment, which adds to the cost. You have to factor finishing into the cost of hardwood flooring, too, unless you’re using prefinished flooring.
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